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Sunday, 21 January 2018

LIVING WITH ANXIETY

I was 15 when I had my first panic attack, I remember thinking it was a heart attack at the time. Nothing had triggered it, I’d never had one before, it just “happened”. I was in school when it happened and I felt so embarrassed by it, I made the conscious decision from then on to internalise it and try to handle it myself. I thought I was doing a good job at it, until about 6 months ago.

Looking back, I see now how my anxiety catching up with me, effected my relationship, friendships, decisions - everything that made me function as a person was being influenced by this feeling. 2 months later my relationship ended in the most unforeseeable way, in a way that felt so soul destroying but I never realised it at the time. Over the course of the last 4 months I have really seen the impact this event had on my life and my anxiety.

I remember waiting for my flight in New York and having to go into the bathroom, lock myself in a cubicle and just have a cry, because the anxiety was just too overwhelming for me. I couldn’t tell you why the fear came over me the way it did, part of me thinks it’s because being in New York was such an escapism from the breakup that I was so scared to return to England because it would then become my reality again.

A week later I went away with my friend for my 21st, we’d got ready to go on a night out. Despite me really wanting to go, I just couldn’t face it, the reality of my night was sitting in the hotel room, watching movies until 2am crying.

From then on incidents kept popping up that really tried to test my emotions. To the point where I was (and still am) getting anxious over really irregular things...

Anxiety over going on nights out,

Anxiety over certain people’s intentions in my life,

Anxiety over doing my job,

Anxiety over text messages,

Anxiety over eating certain foods,

Anxiety over certain people viewing my story on social media,

Anxiety over people’s opinions.

The list is endless and has become something that’s made me feel so out of my depth with dealing with because all the things I did that made me “me” are now giving me this impending fear and I don’t know how to deal with that. It’s a feeling that’s so debilitating, it can take over your life without reason and to anyone who’s not experienced it before it’s impossible to relate to. It’s a feeling that leaves you operating irrationally and doing something you regret 10 minutes later.

Now I’d love to be able to sit here and preach that I’ve got a solution to this on lock and that there’s light at the end of the tunnel etc. However, the reality of it is, I’m writing this blog post at 5am because I woke up from having a panic attack over a dream. So I haven’t got a solution on how to fix it, for myself, or for anyone else and truth be told, I feel like I’m a let down for not having one. But what I can say is, you’re not alone. That it doesn’t matter why or how you’re feeling it. It doesn’t matter if the problem behind it is big or small. We live during anxious times, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the world from one day to the next, that means there’s generally an anxious energy in the air anyways. Just know that it’s not something that needs to be internalised, it’s a lot more normal than you think and you don’t need to rationalise why you’re feeling the way you are. If someone doesn’t get it, they just don’t get it, but other people will.

On that note, if anyone does have any solutions for their anxiety, please feel free to email me at aoifecooksey@gmail.com